Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Wai! FFX-2's finally out. Yeah, I know, I thought it'd suck too, but it's actually not terrible. Blitzball's back, Bickson's back, Miyu's back, Rin's back. One uncool thing, though: Linna's not. Her character design has been used for a supporting character called Nhadala (anyone else think there might be a good explanation like this? Maybe Linna changed her name and moved back to Bikanel...) Anyway, despite this rampant suckiness, X-2 is very yay, and you should all go buy it. Woo.
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.
Green Eyes in Overdrive
by flame mage
round 10: Avenger
**********
"Awright, machina queen," Reppi said to me a couple minutes later, "take a look."
I was looking at a dark, slightly raised platform on the ground. It was roughly diamond-shaped, with smaller diamonds at each point, and I knew exactly what it was.
"Hey, guys," I announced, "this is a little something I like to call a teleport platform."
Simultaneous blinks all around. Finally, Zalitz put in, "Uhm...question? What's a teleport platform?"
"How are you not getting this, oy lnadehc?" I demanded, flinging my arms out. "What did you think those elevator pads at the hotel in Luca were, decorative rugs? Ya step on it and it moves ya from one place to another, get it?"
Zalitz shrugged and stepped on it. Nothing happened. "I'm not going anywhere," he noted.
"Maybe she's finally cracked," suggested Naida smugly.
I was starting to get defensive. "Okay, so it's broken. No problem. Lemme just take a look here." I got down on my knees authoritatively like I knew what I was doing.
Looked at it. It looked like a teleport platform. So far, so good.
Poked it. Nope, nothing doin'.
Poked it again, just to make sure. Behind me, I heard Naida groan.
"No need to worry. I got everything under control. I'm a professional here." I told three lies in one breath, but all three of those crazy clueless non-machine-geeks visibly relaxed. Okay. Now I just had to figure out what was wrong. I had a hunch that if Reppi was right, this platform was the only way in and out of this room--the guards must've broken it on their way out, knowing I'd know what it was and how to use it.
I crawled on my hands and knees in a small circle around the platform a couple times before--lo and behold!--I figured out the problem: one of the corners was *jammed.* It had been literally wedged underneath the section of stone floor its base had been carved out of.
"So I'm guessing no one has a pocket knife or anything sharp like that, right?" I grunted after trying unsuccessfully for three minutes straight to get the edge outta the ground.
Collective rustling sounds as everyone rummaged through his or her pockets. After a couple seconds, Reppi sighed with frustration. "Nothin'."
"They took my knife when they threw me in here," Zalitz told me. "All I have on me is a can of board wax."
"Just a moment." I looked back at Naida and saw her set her makeup bag on the ground. "Let me see...my lipsticks...eyeshadow...cream foundation...eyelash curler...compact...nail file..."
"Great!" I shoved a hand in between the two sides of the zipper and snatched the nail file outta the bag. Naida squawked, but by that time I was already leaning over the corner of the platform with the file jammed toward me in the crack. Nothing moved. I stood up, leaned the bottom of my heeled-boot-clad foot against the file, and stepped on it like I was flooring the gas of a machina jet and fiends were chasing me.
"My file!" Naida howled as it snapped in half. But the edge of the platform was free.
I brushed myself off. "Okay," I instructed the others, "in a couple of seconds here, I'll probably disappear. Don't freak, and don't touch the pad. If it's okay, I'll come back soon and you can go through. If I don't come back, figure out who's the most expendable and send them through." Bracing myself, I stepped on the platform.
Nothing happened.
"Yf, fryd dra ramm?!" I exploded, getting off and kicking it. "Fung ymnayto!"
"Yc ysicehk yc dryd ec, E ryja cdnuhk tuipdc ypuid dra megameruut uv ed fungehk," cut in the Al Bhed merchant coolly.
"Oui cilg," I shot back. "What's wrong with this thing?"
"Dude, how are we supposed to know? We don't even know how it works." Zalitz was starting to talk in the same petulant tone as Naida, and it was getting on my nerves.
"Okay, this is what'd be happening right now in a perfect world. I get on the pad." I was demonstrating now. "A little lighted arrow appears with this zinging sound, and I step on the corner of the direction I wanna go in to make the arrow change directions. Then I step on the arrowhead, and I'm catapulted wherever the next platform in that direction is."
"Ya don't even have an arrow, though," Reppi pointed out. "Somethin' else must be wrong with the platform."
"Yeah, but damn if I know what. I don't even know what these things run on. Electricity? Batteries? Human souls? What?"
Zalitz asked, "You're, like, totally 100% sure it's a machina, right?"
"Pretty sure. And that means the problem could be anything. If they took one part outta it, it might not work. We'd be completely screwed." I was starting to get really frustrated here. At this rate, I was definitely never gonna see Bickson and the others again, even if they were alive. I wound up and kicked the edge of the platform again, harder, like I was shooting the winning goal of the Yevon Cup tournament.
The platform upended itself and toppled backwards end-over-end, finally stopping flat a couple feet away. It left behind a platform-shaped depression, maybe four inches deep, with a round hole in the middle about eight inches down from the surface. Inside this hole was an open glass jar. As we watched, a single Pyrefly fluttered out of the jar and into the air.
Reppi was the first to speak. "These things are runnin' on Moonflow," she said, sounding awed.
"It seems that way, doesn't it?" Naida agreed. "The guards must have emptied the jar before they went away and left just enough Moonflow so they could get back. When they put the platform back, they jammed it under the ground by mistake, or perhaps just to make sure we couldn't escape if there was any Moonflow left."
"So we need some more Moonflow, dudes," was Zalitz's opinion. "But where are we supposed to get it around here?"
"Where are we supposed'ta get it?" Reppi grimaced. "We're eatin' it, Zalitz. We get it from the fiends."
*****
"So how do you propose we do this, Reppi?" Naida asked about a half hour later. We were sitting on the rocks around the campfire again, trying to figure out how to bottle a fiend's Moonflow.
"Lemme think," the goalie said slowly, chewing a marshmallow. "We've gotta kill the fiend ta get the Moonflow. But if we kill it all at once, there's not gonna be any way anyone can get enough'ta fill up the jar. So we're gonna hafta hold it still and kill it slowly."
"Hey, if you were killin' me slowly, I don't think I'd hold still," Zalitz put in. "We'll have to find a really small fiend so someone can hold it down."
"You seen any small fiends around here, boy?" Reppi interrupted him. "They're all huge. There's gotta be a better way than makin' someone ride it like a buckin' bronco."
"Do we have anything that could be used as a net or a trap, something like that?" asked Naida.
Reppi thought for a sec, then shook her head. "Zilch. Can't think of anything that'd work anyway."
Zalitz laughed. "Why don't we just bust out there, look intimidating, and demand that it hold still so we can kill it?"
There was silence for a minute, then Naida burst out into a long peal of laughter. Reppi was looking thoughtful again, though. "Y'know," she said, "it's crazy, but it just might work."
"What are you talking about? You trippin'?" Zalitz asked, looking startled--possibly by the rampant cliche. "Dude, I was just kidding!"
"I'm not "trippin'" here, child." Reppi pulled out the sphere grid and ran a finger over it. "Wait...wait...here!" She jabbed a nail into one of the unfilled holes. "This is a skill called 'Threaten' that does just that. It'll make a fiend hold still! If someone uses that, the others can attack it, and we'll just have one person snatch the Moonflow up as it comes out!"
Mass blink as we all tried to figure out whether she was serious or not. She didn't crack up, so after a while it dawned on us that she really wasn't kidding.
"Dude," Zalitz said solemnly after a minute, "that is the craziest thing I've ever heard."
"It might work, actually," Naida told him. "The only problem, as I see it, is that no one is even remotely near Threaten on this sphere grid." I raised an eyebrow and she answered the question before I could ask it. "The nodes must be activated in order; you can't skip around on the grid. It would take days, possibly weeks, for any of us to be able to learn that skill."
"Not with this." Reppi took a sphere out of her pocket and held it up so we could see it. "A teleport sphere. It'll let anyone learn the skill right now."
"Who?" Naida and Zalitz asked at the same time.
"We're definitely gonna need the fastest person ta collect the Moonflow," Reppi decided, looking pointedly at the Al Bhed merchant--who just happened to be faster than almost anyone in the league except possibly a couple of Guado. "I'm the only one can use Fira, so I gotta stay a little ways away so I can scare the thing off if anythin' goes wrong. That leaves one'a you two."
Zalitz looked at me. "Look, dude, I know I worked on the docks and everything, but I'm not all that strong. If I Threaten the fiend, you'll be okay to attack it."
"You're kidding, right?" I laughed. "You're talkin' suicide. I've never even been in a real battle."
"I dunno. You were pretty cool with that tough guy back there," Reppi told me. "Maybe you got what it takes. Blitz and battle aren't so different, y'know? My brutha did both too."
"But I don't know magic or anything," I protested.
"You don't need magic, child. I'm the mage here. All ya gotta do is swing a sword around. That's the easy job."
"But I don't know how to use a...screw it. You're not gonna listen to me, are you?"
"Nope."
"Okay." I sighed. "I'll do it."
The goalie shot me a toothy grin. "Great." Then she turned to the others and said, "Y'all take a load off, hear? Linna's fixin' dinner tonight."
"Whaa?"
"You're gonna hafta learn to fight fiends anyway, and we gotta eat. Plus, ya gotta have a couple'a spheres to be able to learn the tricks you'll need to do this. Might as well get it all done at once."
She had a point, and the only way out looked like it was through that teleport platform. Even if it wasn't, I'd probably have to fight through a bunch of guards to see the other side of the temple walls. If I wanted to get out of the joint alive, I was going to have to do this.
There was no better plan than to do or to die. "Lemme see this sword of yours," I said.
*****
When I'm not being held captive and left to die by crazed pseudo-religious fanatics, I work out eight or nine times a week. I can bench-press more than I weigh. From all the shooting and passing I do, both my upper and lower body are stronger than pretty much any other woman's in the league, and most of the men's. But I'm not that fast and I'm not that agile, and the only sword we had--a rusty hunk of junk Reppi had picked up next to the skeleton of a previous inhabitant when she'd showed up--was designed for people like Tidus who were. That meant that no matter how hard I swung, it didn't pack enough of a punch to do much good, and I was too inexperienced to recover from a strike quickly.
I found this out during my first real battle, in which I fought--if you can call it that--something that Reppi later told me was called a One-Eye. I probably coulda figured this out if I coulda seen it for two-tenths of a second, but as it was I never got a good look. The sword was awkward, too, which didn't help. I kept waving it around experimentally, hoping I'd get better at it, but I needed time to train that I just didn't have.
I tried to tell her that. "Reppi, I can't use this," I said. "If I had a week, I could learn, but there's no way..."
"You don't have a choice," she answered harshly. "A blitzball won't draw Pyreflies from a fiend. It has to be stabbed. There's no other way."
As usual, she wasn't gonna listen. "All right." I straightened myself out, realized belatedly that I had brought my gear bag with me, and set it down, cursing. Then I gripped the hilt in both hands. "Ur, famm. Ev E's clnafat, E's clnafat. Drec ec y fycda uv desa," I said to myself. Then I turned to Reppi. "Okay, put out the fire. I'm ready."
She didn't say anything else to me. "Watera!" she called instead, startling me out of my wits so I nearly dropped the sword. While I was freaking, she waved one hand in the air and a deluge of water shot out of it and into the torch, leaving us in total darkness.
And then, we just waited. Like sitting ducks.
My goggles were half-broken and I was getting only dim light, but I was able to make out shapes by the time the first fiend came.
It wasn't as big as the one I'd fought when I first showed up in the Via, and it was floating. It also had one giant eyeball that was gleaming faintly inside my goggles, so it wasn't that hard to pick out. I could feel the air on my face from the flapping of its leathery wings. The stagnant air was warm and dry, like the wind in Bikanel.
The thing dove at me. Involuntarily I yelled, startled, and lunged out of the way. It dive-bombed again and I threw myself on the hard ground and rolled.
"Whaddaya doin'?! Get up and fight!" Reppi yelled.
I grunted and jumped to my feet. The thing swung toward me again and I slashed blindly. It swooped up and out of my reach--well, duh, Linna. When it flung itself toward me again, I yelled and leapt forward as high as I could. It ducked under me and I landed hard on my knees. The sword jammed point-first in the ground and broke.
This was not doing anything for my headache. I groaned. "Reppi! The damn thing snapped! What the hell do I do?!"
I couldn't see her, but I could definitely hear her. "Improvise!" she shouted.
"Yeah, some help you are," I muttered bitterly as I groped around on the ground for the sword point, nearly slicing my hand on it in the process. Then I found my blitzball in the bag, jammed the broken edge into it, and hurled the whole thing at the fiend.
It fell to the ground, and Reppi immediately jumped out and carved it up with a knife. I scooped to pick up the spheres it had dropped. The last I saw of it was the single bloody eyeball leering at me before it rolled into the darkness.
**********
Translations:
oy lnadehc - ya cretins
"Yf, fryd dra ramm?! Fung ymnayto!" - "Aw, what the hell?! Work already!"
"Yc ysicehk yc dryd ec, E ryja cdnuhk tuipdc ypuid dra megameruut uv ed fungehk." - "As amusing as that is, I have strong doubts about the likelihood of it working."
"Oui cilg." - "You suck."
Wai! FFX-2's finally out. Yeah, I know, I thought it'd suck too, but it's actually not terrible. Blitzball's back, Bickson's back, Miyu's back, Rin's back. One uncool thing, though: Linna's not. Her character design has been used for a supporting character called Nhadala (anyone else think there might be a good explanation like this? Maybe Linna changed her name and moved back to Bikanel...) Anyway, despite this rampant suckiness, X-2 is very yay, and you should all go buy it. Woo.
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.
Green Eyes in Overdrive
by flame mage
round 10: Avenger
**********
"Awright, machina queen," Reppi said to me a couple minutes later, "take a look."
I was looking at a dark, slightly raised platform on the ground. It was roughly diamond-shaped, with smaller diamonds at each point, and I knew exactly what it was.
"Hey, guys," I announced, "this is a little something I like to call a teleport platform."
Simultaneous blinks all around. Finally, Zalitz put in, "Uhm...question? What's a teleport platform?"
"How are you not getting this, oy lnadehc?" I demanded, flinging my arms out. "What did you think those elevator pads at the hotel in Luca were, decorative rugs? Ya step on it and it moves ya from one place to another, get it?"
Zalitz shrugged and stepped on it. Nothing happened. "I'm not going anywhere," he noted.
"Maybe she's finally cracked," suggested Naida smugly.
I was starting to get defensive. "Okay, so it's broken. No problem. Lemme just take a look here." I got down on my knees authoritatively like I knew what I was doing.
Looked at it. It looked like a teleport platform. So far, so good.
Poked it. Nope, nothing doin'.
Poked it again, just to make sure. Behind me, I heard Naida groan.
"No need to worry. I got everything under control. I'm a professional here." I told three lies in one breath, but all three of those crazy clueless non-machine-geeks visibly relaxed. Okay. Now I just had to figure out what was wrong. I had a hunch that if Reppi was right, this platform was the only way in and out of this room--the guards must've broken it on their way out, knowing I'd know what it was and how to use it.
I crawled on my hands and knees in a small circle around the platform a couple times before--lo and behold!--I figured out the problem: one of the corners was *jammed.* It had been literally wedged underneath the section of stone floor its base had been carved out of.
"So I'm guessing no one has a pocket knife or anything sharp like that, right?" I grunted after trying unsuccessfully for three minutes straight to get the edge outta the ground.
Collective rustling sounds as everyone rummaged through his or her pockets. After a couple seconds, Reppi sighed with frustration. "Nothin'."
"They took my knife when they threw me in here," Zalitz told me. "All I have on me is a can of board wax."
"Just a moment." I looked back at Naida and saw her set her makeup bag on the ground. "Let me see...my lipsticks...eyeshadow...cream foundation...eyelash curler...compact...nail file..."
"Great!" I shoved a hand in between the two sides of the zipper and snatched the nail file outta the bag. Naida squawked, but by that time I was already leaning over the corner of the platform with the file jammed toward me in the crack. Nothing moved. I stood up, leaned the bottom of my heeled-boot-clad foot against the file, and stepped on it like I was flooring the gas of a machina jet and fiends were chasing me.
"My file!" Naida howled as it snapped in half. But the edge of the platform was free.
I brushed myself off. "Okay," I instructed the others, "in a couple of seconds here, I'll probably disappear. Don't freak, and don't touch the pad. If it's okay, I'll come back soon and you can go through. If I don't come back, figure out who's the most expendable and send them through." Bracing myself, I stepped on the platform.
Nothing happened.
"Yf, fryd dra ramm?!" I exploded, getting off and kicking it. "Fung ymnayto!"
"Yc ysicehk yc dryd ec, E ryja cdnuhk tuipdc ypuid dra megameruut uv ed fungehk," cut in the Al Bhed merchant coolly.
"Oui cilg," I shot back. "What's wrong with this thing?"
"Dude, how are we supposed to know? We don't even know how it works." Zalitz was starting to talk in the same petulant tone as Naida, and it was getting on my nerves.
"Okay, this is what'd be happening right now in a perfect world. I get on the pad." I was demonstrating now. "A little lighted arrow appears with this zinging sound, and I step on the corner of the direction I wanna go in to make the arrow change directions. Then I step on the arrowhead, and I'm catapulted wherever the next platform in that direction is."
"Ya don't even have an arrow, though," Reppi pointed out. "Somethin' else must be wrong with the platform."
"Yeah, but damn if I know what. I don't even know what these things run on. Electricity? Batteries? Human souls? What?"
Zalitz asked, "You're, like, totally 100% sure it's a machina, right?"
"Pretty sure. And that means the problem could be anything. If they took one part outta it, it might not work. We'd be completely screwed." I was starting to get really frustrated here. At this rate, I was definitely never gonna see Bickson and the others again, even if they were alive. I wound up and kicked the edge of the platform again, harder, like I was shooting the winning goal of the Yevon Cup tournament.
The platform upended itself and toppled backwards end-over-end, finally stopping flat a couple feet away. It left behind a platform-shaped depression, maybe four inches deep, with a round hole in the middle about eight inches down from the surface. Inside this hole was an open glass jar. As we watched, a single Pyrefly fluttered out of the jar and into the air.
Reppi was the first to speak. "These things are runnin' on Moonflow," she said, sounding awed.
"It seems that way, doesn't it?" Naida agreed. "The guards must have emptied the jar before they went away and left just enough Moonflow so they could get back. When they put the platform back, they jammed it under the ground by mistake, or perhaps just to make sure we couldn't escape if there was any Moonflow left."
"So we need some more Moonflow, dudes," was Zalitz's opinion. "But where are we supposed to get it around here?"
"Where are we supposed'ta get it?" Reppi grimaced. "We're eatin' it, Zalitz. We get it from the fiends."
*****
"So how do you propose we do this, Reppi?" Naida asked about a half hour later. We were sitting on the rocks around the campfire again, trying to figure out how to bottle a fiend's Moonflow.
"Lemme think," the goalie said slowly, chewing a marshmallow. "We've gotta kill the fiend ta get the Moonflow. But if we kill it all at once, there's not gonna be any way anyone can get enough'ta fill up the jar. So we're gonna hafta hold it still and kill it slowly."
"Hey, if you were killin' me slowly, I don't think I'd hold still," Zalitz put in. "We'll have to find a really small fiend so someone can hold it down."
"You seen any small fiends around here, boy?" Reppi interrupted him. "They're all huge. There's gotta be a better way than makin' someone ride it like a buckin' bronco."
"Do we have anything that could be used as a net or a trap, something like that?" asked Naida.
Reppi thought for a sec, then shook her head. "Zilch. Can't think of anything that'd work anyway."
Zalitz laughed. "Why don't we just bust out there, look intimidating, and demand that it hold still so we can kill it?"
There was silence for a minute, then Naida burst out into a long peal of laughter. Reppi was looking thoughtful again, though. "Y'know," she said, "it's crazy, but it just might work."
"What are you talking about? You trippin'?" Zalitz asked, looking startled--possibly by the rampant cliche. "Dude, I was just kidding!"
"I'm not "trippin'" here, child." Reppi pulled out the sphere grid and ran a finger over it. "Wait...wait...here!" She jabbed a nail into one of the unfilled holes. "This is a skill called 'Threaten' that does just that. It'll make a fiend hold still! If someone uses that, the others can attack it, and we'll just have one person snatch the Moonflow up as it comes out!"
Mass blink as we all tried to figure out whether she was serious or not. She didn't crack up, so after a while it dawned on us that she really wasn't kidding.
"Dude," Zalitz said solemnly after a minute, "that is the craziest thing I've ever heard."
"It might work, actually," Naida told him. "The only problem, as I see it, is that no one is even remotely near Threaten on this sphere grid." I raised an eyebrow and she answered the question before I could ask it. "The nodes must be activated in order; you can't skip around on the grid. It would take days, possibly weeks, for any of us to be able to learn that skill."
"Not with this." Reppi took a sphere out of her pocket and held it up so we could see it. "A teleport sphere. It'll let anyone learn the skill right now."
"Who?" Naida and Zalitz asked at the same time.
"We're definitely gonna need the fastest person ta collect the Moonflow," Reppi decided, looking pointedly at the Al Bhed merchant--who just happened to be faster than almost anyone in the league except possibly a couple of Guado. "I'm the only one can use Fira, so I gotta stay a little ways away so I can scare the thing off if anythin' goes wrong. That leaves one'a you two."
Zalitz looked at me. "Look, dude, I know I worked on the docks and everything, but I'm not all that strong. If I Threaten the fiend, you'll be okay to attack it."
"You're kidding, right?" I laughed. "You're talkin' suicide. I've never even been in a real battle."
"I dunno. You were pretty cool with that tough guy back there," Reppi told me. "Maybe you got what it takes. Blitz and battle aren't so different, y'know? My brutha did both too."
"But I don't know magic or anything," I protested.
"You don't need magic, child. I'm the mage here. All ya gotta do is swing a sword around. That's the easy job."
"But I don't know how to use a...screw it. You're not gonna listen to me, are you?"
"Nope."
"Okay." I sighed. "I'll do it."
The goalie shot me a toothy grin. "Great." Then she turned to the others and said, "Y'all take a load off, hear? Linna's fixin' dinner tonight."
"Whaa?"
"You're gonna hafta learn to fight fiends anyway, and we gotta eat. Plus, ya gotta have a couple'a spheres to be able to learn the tricks you'll need to do this. Might as well get it all done at once."
She had a point, and the only way out looked like it was through that teleport platform. Even if it wasn't, I'd probably have to fight through a bunch of guards to see the other side of the temple walls. If I wanted to get out of the joint alive, I was going to have to do this.
There was no better plan than to do or to die. "Lemme see this sword of yours," I said.
*****
When I'm not being held captive and left to die by crazed pseudo-religious fanatics, I work out eight or nine times a week. I can bench-press more than I weigh. From all the shooting and passing I do, both my upper and lower body are stronger than pretty much any other woman's in the league, and most of the men's. But I'm not that fast and I'm not that agile, and the only sword we had--a rusty hunk of junk Reppi had picked up next to the skeleton of a previous inhabitant when she'd showed up--was designed for people like Tidus who were. That meant that no matter how hard I swung, it didn't pack enough of a punch to do much good, and I was too inexperienced to recover from a strike quickly.
I found this out during my first real battle, in which I fought--if you can call it that--something that Reppi later told me was called a One-Eye. I probably coulda figured this out if I coulda seen it for two-tenths of a second, but as it was I never got a good look. The sword was awkward, too, which didn't help. I kept waving it around experimentally, hoping I'd get better at it, but I needed time to train that I just didn't have.
I tried to tell her that. "Reppi, I can't use this," I said. "If I had a week, I could learn, but there's no way..."
"You don't have a choice," she answered harshly. "A blitzball won't draw Pyreflies from a fiend. It has to be stabbed. There's no other way."
As usual, she wasn't gonna listen. "All right." I straightened myself out, realized belatedly that I had brought my gear bag with me, and set it down, cursing. Then I gripped the hilt in both hands. "Ur, famm. Ev E's clnafat, E's clnafat. Drec ec y fycda uv desa," I said to myself. Then I turned to Reppi. "Okay, put out the fire. I'm ready."
She didn't say anything else to me. "Watera!" she called instead, startling me out of my wits so I nearly dropped the sword. While I was freaking, she waved one hand in the air and a deluge of water shot out of it and into the torch, leaving us in total darkness.
And then, we just waited. Like sitting ducks.
My goggles were half-broken and I was getting only dim light, but I was able to make out shapes by the time the first fiend came.
It wasn't as big as the one I'd fought when I first showed up in the Via, and it was floating. It also had one giant eyeball that was gleaming faintly inside my goggles, so it wasn't that hard to pick out. I could feel the air on my face from the flapping of its leathery wings. The stagnant air was warm and dry, like the wind in Bikanel.
The thing dove at me. Involuntarily I yelled, startled, and lunged out of the way. It dive-bombed again and I threw myself on the hard ground and rolled.
"Whaddaya doin'?! Get up and fight!" Reppi yelled.
I grunted and jumped to my feet. The thing swung toward me again and I slashed blindly. It swooped up and out of my reach--well, duh, Linna. When it flung itself toward me again, I yelled and leapt forward as high as I could. It ducked under me and I landed hard on my knees. The sword jammed point-first in the ground and broke.
This was not doing anything for my headache. I groaned. "Reppi! The damn thing snapped! What the hell do I do?!"
I couldn't see her, but I could definitely hear her. "Improvise!" she shouted.
"Yeah, some help you are," I muttered bitterly as I groped around on the ground for the sword point, nearly slicing my hand on it in the process. Then I found my blitzball in the bag, jammed the broken edge into it, and hurled the whole thing at the fiend.
It fell to the ground, and Reppi immediately jumped out and carved it up with a knife. I scooped to pick up the spheres it had dropped. The last I saw of it was the single bloody eyeball leering at me before it rolled into the darkness.
**********
Translations:
oy lnadehc - ya cretins
"Yf, fryd dra ramm?! Fung ymnayto!" - "Aw, what the hell?! Work already!"
"Yc ysicehk yc dryd ec, E ryja cdnuhk tuipdc ypuid dra megameruut uv ed fungehk." - "As amusing as that is, I have strong doubts about the likelihood of it working."
"Oui cilg." - "You suck."